Of course, hardware announcements are traditionally always the heaviest hitting, and that’s certainly why Microsoft wanted to end the conference with the double announcement of the Xbox One Slim and Project Scorpio. Was that a smoke screen though, intended to disguise the console’s rather lean software lineup and the fact that most of the games shown were ones we had seen before? Maybe, but regardless, Microsoft’s conference was still a respectable showing and the ball was firmly in Sony’s court at its conclusion.
Given that we already knew Neo wasn’t going to make an appearance at the conference, it was always going to be a strong games lineup that would give PS4 any chance to compete. But boy were we not prepared for the onslaught of software that Sony called upon. We got a rebooted God of War, a release date for The Last Guardian, finally a reveal for Bend’s new IP Days Gone, superb new footage Horizon Zero Dawn and our first glimpse at Quantic Dreams’ Detroit Become Human; all exclusive content and all receiving significant stage time. If that wasn’t enough, Sony then dropped the three almighty crowd pleasing bombs in Crash Bandicoot’s remaster, Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding and Insomniac’s up and coming Spider Man game.
PlayStation gamers simply could not have asked for anymore, and especially in the wake of Microsoft’s Windows 10 corporate imperative that virtually negates true exclusives for Xbox One, the sheer volume of content for PlayStation was a particularly pertinent revelation.
Even the demonstration of Sony’s third party affiliations, which was fairly minimal in comparison to previous E3 conferences, was well handled. The Resident Evil 7 VR revelation was a big moment in itself. In fact, on a different year that could even have been the showpiece moment for an entire conference, especially given the VR nature of the game’s application, an obviously important aspect to PlayStation 4’s future library. The Star Wars X Wing VR experience, too, had all the drama and excitement of a big reveal, and would probably have generated a bigger stir had it not been for the immensely strong showing of Sony’s exclusive content.